Riazul Islam from Feni has spent years working as an electrician for a company in Kuwait. An Egyptian national holds the same post. The two men do much the same work, yet the Egyptian is paid nearly twice as much — and one factor behind the gap is institutional skills certification.

Riazul left for Kuwait without any recognised training or electrician’s certificate from Bangladesh. He went abroad as an unskilled worker and was promoted to electrician later on the strength of experience gained on the job. Lacking an institutional certificate, he performs the same work as his colleague but remains behind in both recognition of his skills and his pay.

His experience is that of a large share of Bangladeshi migrant workers. The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) was set up in 1976 to produce and send workers for overseas employment. It now oversees 104 technical training centres (TTCs) across the country, with construction of another 50 at upazila level underway. Yet only 9.9 percent of workers receive any training at these centres before they leave.

A Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) survey titled ‘Reintegration of Migrant Workers’ found that 71.3 percent of workers who present themselves for the mandatory pre-departure orientation (PDO) go abroad without any skills training at all. Just 9.9 percent had trained at a TTC, while 17.6 percent had trained at other institutions.

In other words, two-thirds of those heading overseas enter foreign labour markets without skills training. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed were bound for the Middle East, and 13 percent of them said they were going abroad for a second time.

How weak the connection is between the TTCs and the real labour market for prospective migrant workers also shows up in who trains there. According to the CPD survey, 50.9 percent of TTC trainees are students. The unemployed account for 19.3 percent, the employed 8.7 percent, business people 5 percent and homemakers 5 percent. More people come to acquire general skills or an alternative livelihood than to prepare for work abroad, and the direct link between training and supplying workers to overseas jobs has not materialised.

Saiful Islam Tutul, a class nine student in Naldanga upazila, took a three-month electrical installation and maintenance course at Natore TTC last year. Most of those who enrolled with him were students too. The TTC currently runs six trades. Four of them — electrical installation and maintenance, sewing machine operation, refrigeration and air conditioning, and computer — offer a stipend of BDT 9,600 on completion. Officials concerned say that many students with no plans to work abroad enrol on these courses for the money.

The same picture emerged from CPD’s survey of 40 government TTCs and 2,000 people who had been trained. Of the trainees, 78.7 percent said they had taken the course to acquire skills, while 37.9 percent had done so in the hope of a job abroad. Some also cited the training allowance as their reason for enrolling.

BMET’s own figures point to the same shortfall: the training on offer at the TTCs is not oriented towards work abroad. Across the three fiscal years from 2021–22 to 2023–24, driving accounted for 19.6 percent of all admissions at the centres, housekeeping for 17.2 percent, computer operation for 10.5 percent, electrical installation for 8.5 percent and the SSC (vocational) course for 8.2 percent. Korean, Japanese and Chinese language courses together accounted for roughly 2.6 percent.

TTC principals say there is demand for computer operation, driving and welding. Yet trades that are in demand, among them tailoring, food and beverage, mobile servicing and solar systems, are missing from many centres.

CPD Research Fellow Abu Saleh Md Shamim Alam Shibly told Bonik Barta: “BMET and the TTCs were set up mainly to produce skilled workers suited to overseas employment, but today they are more involved in domestic training. Workers, meanwhile, are going abroad without any training. This suggests that the institutions have lost sight of their core purpose.”

To address the situation, the researcher believes TTCs must prioritise destination countries’ labour market needs by providing demand-driven training, language instruction, skills assessments and internationally recognised certification.

“Bureaucratic oversight could be cut back, with selected TTCs run under BOESL and brought under results-based monitoring,” Shibly said. “Because they have direct contact with foreign employers, that could improve coordination between training and recruitment.”

The link between training and the job market is weak on other measures too. Of the trained people surveyed, 23.3 percent said the training had helped them not at all in finding work, while 17.7 percent said it had helped a lot. A further 29.5 percent were neutral, and 29.7 percent said the training had matched the workplace entirely.

Responsibility for skills training in Bangladesh does not lie with BMET alone. The National Action Plan 2022–27 lists 47 organisations involved in skills training, and the top 16 delivered 90 percent of all training in 2019–20.

The Skills for Employment Investment Programme (SEIP) alone accounted for 25 percent, the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) for 12 percent and the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) for 11 percent. BMET’s share was just 2 percent. These bodies are mainly focused on the domestic labour market, and none but the TTCs gives separate attention to the skills of migrant workers. Yet even TTC training, established for overseas employment, is shaped more by demand at home.

Infrastructure and training capacity are a further problem. According to the CPD survey, equipment at 40 percent of TTCs is not consistent with industry standards. More than half the principals said their laboratories lacked adequate modern machinery, and only 40 percent considered training materials sufficient. Just 35 percent of TTCs offer NSDA Level-4 courses, and 64.3 percent among those centres have only the essential equipment.

The Fenchuganj TTC in Sylhet offers an example. Opened formally in July 2023 on about 1.5 acres at a cost of nearly BDT 250 million, it has a four-storey academic building, a three-storey dormitory, a four-storey residential block for teachers, along with modern laboratories and training equipment.

But three months after the World Bank-funded ASSET project’s five courses reached the end of their term in June, no new students have been enrolled, leaving the modern machinery and other equipment idle.

Training at the Fenchuganj TTC has been suspended outright since June 2026, its acting principal, Abdur Rahim, told Bonik Barta, adding that five courses had been running there under the World Bank-funded ASSET project until its term expired. “Currently there’s no one here except one computer operator and me,” he said.

Migration specialists said more than two-thirds of workers going abroad without training send a wrong message to prospective migrants that skills training is not necessary for a foreign job. Government-to-government (G2G) placements require training and experience in a specified trade. Experts added that so many untrained workers nonetheless reaching overseas raises questions about how effectively their qualifications are being checked.

Migration expert Asif Munir believes certification can in many cases be obtained without training at all, and that unskilled workers consequently end up abroad on low pay and exposed to various forms of fraud.

“The political tendency to increase numbers without ensuring the quality of TTCs has gone on for years, and CPD’s survey reflects it clearly,” Munir told Bonik Barta.

He added: “Many TTCs approved for the political purposes of MPs or locally influential leaders have neither adequate instructors nor a regular body of trainees. BMET officials and the ministry concerned are aware of the existing weaknesses, yet another 50 TTCs were added in this year’s budget with no improvement in quality. Modern curricula introduced with the support of international organisations and machinery bought with public money are being left unused. What is needed in these circumstances is not merely assurances about raising skills but real administrative accountability for officials at BMET and the relevant ministry.”

Even as the existing 104 TTCs struggle with staffing shortages, outdated machinery and other problems, the government is pressing ahead with a BDT 37.51 billion project to build 50 new centres rather than strengthen what it already has. The scheme approved in 2023 is putting up centres at upazila level.

At the time of approval, the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED), the government’s sole project-monitoring body, recommended against building new centres without first improving existing ones. In a report on 27 TTCs, it found that the centres were failing to fulfil their purpose because training content was not up to date, opportunities for practical training were lacking and instructors were in short supply.

Md Akhtaruzzaman, project director for the establishment of 50 technical training centres under BMET, said land acquisition had been completed in six upazilas and was underway in three more.

Specialists argue that before expanding infrastructure for overseas employment, the quality of training, staffing, equipment and links to the international labour market at existing TTCs should be reviewed. If more than two-thirds of workers leave without any skills training, how far adding TTCs can close the shortage of skilled workers is now a major question.

State Minister for Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Nurul Haque himself acknowledges that many who go abroad untrained run into trouble when they cannot find the work they expected.

Haque told Bonik Barta that TTCs in divisional and some district towns were running reasonably well, but that people at field level had little awareness of the upazila centres. “A lack of publicity is depriving ordinary people of the training on offer. Most TTCs also suffer. There’s also a serious shortage of skilled staff at most TTCs. Those centres have to be run on a makeshift basis,” he added.

The state minister nonetheless stressed the importance of building new TTCs. Many ministries and departments run their own skills training, he said. “But if a technical training centre can be built in every upazila, other ministries will be able to complete their training using this infrastructure, run under the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare. So I think adding another 50 to the existing 104 TTCs, and gradually extending them to every upazila in the country, would be a highly effective and timely project.”